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Lineage shows how a data asset connects to everything around it: what it depends on upstream and what depends on it downstream. It spans your dbt™ project and every connected BI and ingestion tool, so you can trace data all the way from an ingestion source through your models to a BI dashboard.
Lineage lives in the Data Catalog. Open any asset and select its Lineage tab to see its dependencies. This section explains how to read and work with that view.
The Lineage tab on a Catalog asset page showing 40 assets and 39 dependencies for int_f1__race_results_standings, with the lens strip, depth controls, Graph and Table toggle, Tour button, edge legend, and minimap

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The lineage bar

The bar above the canvas carries everything that shapes the view:
  • A count of what is on screen, for example 40 assets · 39 dependencies.
  • Upstream and downstream depth, set independently and applied when you confirm.
  • Zoom in, zoom out, and fit view, plus a node-type filter.
  • Graph and Table, which swap between the canvas and the same dependencies as a list.
  • Tour, a guided walkthrough of the canvas and its controls.
The lens strip sits on the canvas itself, the edge legend along the bottom, and a minimap in the corner for graphs that run past the edge of the view.

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Two ways to view lineage

Graph view

An interactive DAG of upstream and downstream nodes, with node-type filters, depth controls, and click-through navigation.

List view & export

The same dependencies as a sortable, filterable table you can download as CSV.

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Follow a single column

Asset lineage tells you which models feed a model. To trace one value instead, click a column on any card in the Lineage tab, or open a dbt™ asset’s Columns tab and click a column there. Either way, column-level lineage shows where that column’s value comes from, where it flows, and what happened to it at each hop.

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Sources

At the top of the lineage view, the Sources chips show the source systems feeding the asset (for example a dbt™ source or a Fivetran connector), so you can see at a glance where its data originates.
Lineage is built from your dbt™ project and connected integrations, and populates after your first Bolt production run. If an asset isn’t part of the graph yet, the view shows a note instead of a diagram.